textproduct: Amarillo

KEY MESSAGES

Issued at 1140 PM CST Sat Mar 7 2026

- Elevated to critical fire weather conditions are expected Sunday and Monday across the Panhandles. The critical fire weather conditions are expected in the western and central combined Panhandles on Sunday, and the western and central Texas Panhandle on Monday.

- Showers and thunderstorms will be possible Tuesday morning through Tuesday evening, potentially into Tuesday night.

SHORT TERM

(Tonight through Monday night) Issued at 1140 PM CST Sat Mar 7 2026

Water vapor satellite imagery shows a positively tilted trough expending from eastern Canada down into the Midwest and a retrograding closed low just west of the Baja California peninsula. This overall large-scale pattern is expected to remain fairly stagnant through this short-term period, at least for the purposes of this region, although the positively tilted trough will push off to the east and the northern jet stream will become zonal by Sunday night.

Low-level flow across the Panhandles is trending toward southwesterly as a surface high pressure moves east. A surface low will begin developing this morning in northeastern New Mexico/southeastern Colorado which will increase the surface pressure gradient across the Panhandles leading to breezy winds. Expecting the strongest winds to be located in the western and central combined Panhandles at 20-30 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. The surface low could venture slightly into the northwestern combined Panhandles which would weaken the surface winds, particularly for Cimarron county. Very dry air will move in as this occurs, and minimum RH values between 5% to 15% is expected across the Panhandles with the northwestern combined Panhandles seeing the lower end of that range and the southeast seeing the higher end. Due to these warm and very dry conditions, expecting widespread elevated to critical fire weather conditions. Winds will remain out of the southwest and relatively breezy Sunday night with poor overnight RH recovery.

The continuous southwesterly low-level winds will draw in 850mb temperatures that are above the 90th percentile for this point in March which will lead to an even warmer day across the Panhandles. Expecting breezy southwesterly winds across the Panhandles, though shifted slightly further south compared to Sunday. Once again, expecting very dry air across the area with minimum RH values ranging from around 5% to around 15%. This will lead to another day of elevated to critical fire weather conditions, but this time more across the western and central Texas Panhandle. The breezy downsloping southwesterly winds, in addition to the previously mentioned anomalously warm 850mb temperatures, will lead to afternoon temperatures to be in the 80s across the combined Panhandles. There's even a 10-30% chance for highs to reach or slightly exceed 90 degrees in the southeastern Texas Panhandle and Palo Duro Canyon.

The upper-level trough will begin to track east-northeastward toward the Southwestern US Monday night and we will see some moisture and clouds begin to move in to the Panhandles. There will even be a chance for some showers and thunderstorms to move into the southwest Tuesday morning.

Vanden Bosch

LONG TERM

(Tuesday through next Saturday) Issued at 1140 PM CST Sat Mar 7 2026

Shower and thunderstorm chances will be present on Tuesday as an upper-level trough continues to track toward western Texas. There continues to be uncertainty in the track and evolution of the weather system which is leading to vasts uncertainties in the precipitation forecast. Nonetheless, it does look like there'll be decent low-level moisture return from the Gulf, decent 700mb theta-e advection from the Pacific, and plentiful PVA to cause lift. For those reasons there is a good reason to believe in the potential for showers and perhaps even a few thunderstorms on Tuesday. However, the coverage and longevity of this activity is in question. If the weather system becomes an open wave then this could be a quick- hitting system with a potential morning round and an afternoon round. If it's more of a closed trough then we could see rain chances continue into Tuesday night as it tracks off to our east. However, as it stands now, the open wave is the more favored solution.

A cold front will move in Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. There's fairly good confidence that breezy to windy conditions will accompany the front. At this time there is a 10-20% chance for wind gusts to exceed 50 mph Wednesday morning. Expecting a cooler Wednesday behind the front with temperatures in the mid-50s to mid- 60s.

The weather pattern regime will change slightly as we go from Wednesday and into the end of this long-term period. The weather system will continue off to the northeast and we'll eventually see a ridge build just off the West Coast with general troughiness over Canada and the Northern US. This pattern will return us to warmer than normal temperatures (highs in the 70s and 80s) from Thursday through Saturday.

Vanden Bosch

AVIATION

(06Z TAFS) Issued at 1116 PM CST Sat Mar 7 2026

VFR conditions are expected to prevail over the 06Z TAF period. Winds will remain predominantly out of the southwest. During the late morning hours on Sunday, winds are expected to ramp up with gusts reaching greater than 30 kts at both DHT and AMA, before winding down as we approach the end of the TAF period.

AMA WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

TX...Red Flag Warning from noon to 9 PM CST Sunday for TXZ001>004- 006>009-011>013-016-017.

OK...Red Flag Warning from noon to 9 PM CST Sunday for OKZ001-002.